The 7th Hunt : Synopsis
A cross between Blair Witch, Saw and Hostel, told in the narrative style of Sin City or Pulp fiction, The Hunt is a multi-strand story where each character pairing of victim and killer is a story within itself, woven together but those that watch them. The five victims of the 7th Hunt never knew they were being watched. Files were being built on them, on the eligibility… to die.
CALLIE didn’t know her goth nature and violent art would make her the victim of the INQUISITOR, a sadist who tortures her victims into confessing fictitious crimes. Deaf athlete ARIEL can’t have imagined her dreams of running for her country made her the ideal victim for The SNIPER, fast and elusive. RICKY thought the fun he’d had having sex all the time was just that, fun, but it made him the target of The HAND, who will show Ricky that women are as powerful as he thinks he is. SARAH would never have guessed that dumping her boyfriend, and being a little princess, could single her out to The KNIFE, who will teach her a lesson before killing her for her beauty. And finally, aspiring editor and computer whiz CHRIS celebrated hacking into western union database, not knowing he’d come to the attention of The HACKER.
Taken from their normal lives, each victim wakes to find themselves at the hands of their tormentor. Only Ariel manages to escape before being brought to the camp where the killers hold their Hunt, but she is still being stalked by the Sniper, the nightscope gives him a huge advantage. He shoots her in the leg, and plays a cat and mouse game with her, guiding her towards the camp, and she struggles to escape. Finally, exhausted, bleeding, she faces the Sniper, tells him to finish destroying her dreams of running for her country, that he should finish what he started when he hit her leg. He pulls the trigger, and she goes down.
Back in the camp, the victims are separated. Callie wakes strapped to a medieval style torture cross, implements of pain ranged in front of her, the Inquisitor silently stalking round her. She injects Callie with a hallucinogenic drug, and Callie’s fears combine with the implements in front of her, and she imagines being tortured, flogged, branded, but nothing is touching her for real. The torture is interrupted by the Knife, who wants to borrow a taiser.
The Knife has a problem with his victim. Sarah, her wrists lashed to a beam above her head, and has vicious stab wounds, is causing him trouble… by not crying or begging or screaming. Understanding her fate, she has found a curious peace, and will die in dignity. When the Knife returns, no amount of electricity or slashing can make this supposedly superficial girl give in. Drawing on her inner strength, she dies no longer beautiful physically, but with not what everyone expected.
The Mastermind watches in surprise. He amends his notes, observing that his and Knife’s profile for Sarah was wrong. He casually changes his details, watching a girl’s life destroyed in a haze of blood seems to entirely not affect him. He turns his attention to The Hand, who is happily torturing her victim, Ricky. The Hand uses pressure point to inflict horrible pain, but never breaks the skin. Like the Inquisitor, it’s part of the challenge for her. She rapidly reduces the misogynist Ricky into a quivering wreck, reminding him of his hate for himself, ultimately her will kill himself. Despite his ego, being beaten by a woman, finding out that one of his one night stands killer herself, Rickey discovers the only way out is to kill himself… and he does.
In an edit suite, Chris watches horrified, and in a lot of pain. The Hacker’s challenge is to break through five firewalls, and if he does, they’ll release his friends. But just to make it harder, the Hacker cuts a finger of every 6 minutes. If that’s not hard enough, there are video links to the four other victims, and Chris must watch them as he tries to crack the barriers. Despite horrendous pain, and watching his friends struggle and die, he soldiers on, showing far more strength than expected.
He breaks down wall after wall, as the Hacker sits back and watches, quietly amused.
Because the Hacker knows that it’s all futile. Chris breaks the walls and triumphantly insists that they let his friends go. The Hacker responds by cutting his throat and leaving him to die, his last word the name of the girl he has a crush on… Callie.
Callie doesn’t know her friend is dead, and she’s probably more worried about her own fate, as the Inquisitor advances on her, a plastic bag in her hand. On the floor in front of Callie is a drawing she did, of herself suffocating. Her nightmares are being used against her, as the Inquisitor forces the bag over her head, and demands that Callie confesses to stealing a boyfriend. Callie fights hard, and the Inquisitor pulls the bag away… but only a reprieve, she puts it back. Again and again, til Callie cracks and confesses. She did it all.
Watched by the Mastermind, while he is impressed with the Inquisitors skills, and observes once again they got it wrong with Callie, she is a gentle soul, it seems the Inquisitor knows her victim. This is against the rules! So he sends the Hand, who is also his daughter, to deal with the errant killer. The Inquisitor, wholly unimpressed at the interruption, kills the hand, and returns to her victim. She informs Callie that she lied, there was no boyfriend or affair, and her sentence is death. She puts the bag back over Callie’s head, tightens it with a rope, and leaves the poor girl to die. Callie, overcoming her fear of pain, breaks her own thumb to escape the cuffs, and frees herself just as her air runs out.
Outside, the Mastermind has called The Sniper in to kill his daughter’s killer, and to leave the body of Ariel outside the camp. As Sniper comes in, the Knife, bored that he’s finished his killing earlier, goes out to where Ariel lies dead. Back in the camp, The Sniper wounds Inquisitor, but not enough, and she retreats back into her lair, to find Callie huddled in a corner, crying. It’s a trick, and Callie smashes Inquisitor into the ground, and ties her up, leaving her to whatever fate will befall her.
The Knife finds Ariel, and for his own sick fantasy, starts to twist the knife in the wound in her leg, running it up her body, til he reaches the bullet wound in her chest. As he runs the knife over it, he sees… there’s no wound! He looks up, and Ariel’s eyes open. She grabs his knife, they fight and she stabs him! Alive, very alive, she runs to the camp.
As Callie bursts out of her torture chamber, Ariel grabs her and pulls her out of sight. She reveals that the Sniper is a former victim who killed his attacker, and has vowed revenge on the killers. They attempt to set up a trap to catch the mastermind, but he’s not so dumb, and manages to pull Callie in between himself and the Sniper. Tormenting poor Callie by using a pressure point to inflict pain, he assures the Sniper and the two victims that he is going to walk away, that the Hacker has files that implicate The Sniper in all the deaths… he can either take his chances with the cops, or let the Mastermind go. With his finger on the trigger, Callie dying in the hands of the Mastermind, and Ariel bleeding from the wound in her leg, The Sniper has to make the decision…
